Race, Evolution, and Behavior is one of the most important books about race to be written in many years. Not only does it describe the myriad ways in which the races differ, it advances a persuasive and original explanation for what these differences mean and how they came about. Prof. J. Philippe Rushton of the University of Western Ontario has written a rigorously scholarly book that is not always easy to understand, but it could well become a classic in its field, like Race by John Baker and Bias in Mental Testing by Arthur Jensen.

Just how different are the races? Most experts now take differences in intelligence for granted. Prof. Rushton has gone much farther and marshaled a wealth of data on other important differences. Some of these are summarized on page 3, in a chart that deserves close examination. The most striking finding is not just that Asians, whites, and blacks are different, but that the differences fit a pattern, with Asians and blacks at opposite ends of a spectrum, and whites in the middle.

J. Philippe Rushton

A large part of the book — and a good portion of this article — are devoted to reviewing these data, but Prof. Rushton’s most provocative and original contribution is his application of what is called r-K theory to this pattern of Asians-whites-blacks. The main features of r-K theory are represented graphically in the drawing on page 3.

Different species have evolved different approaches to propagation. At one extreme is the r-strategy, by which an organism produces a very large number of offspring, but gives them little or no care. The oyster is a good example. Every year it releases millions of eggs into the ocean and leaves them to the mercies of weather and predators. Almost all of them die, but a few survive.

r organisms must mature quickly because they get no help from their parents. The ones that survive repeat the cycle by producing huge numbers of eggs, only a few of which will live. The symbol r stands for the maximum rate of increase in a population, and when the conditions for reproduction are good, an r-strategist can increase its numbers at a terrific rate.

Asians consistently show more K behavior than whites, who in turn show more than blacks.

At the other extreme is the K-strategy, which is used by more advanced animals, including man. The number of offspring is much smaller, but great effort is taken to give each one a good chance of survival. K- and r-strategists consequently are very different both in biology and in what Prof. Rushton calls life histories.

K-strategists live longer, have larger brains, and take longer to reach sexual maturity. Unlike the simpler r-strategists, they tend to have some kind of social organization. Besides the care they give their young, adults may share food, cooperate in the hunt, and fight predators together. The K-symbol stands for the carrying capacity of the breeding area, and represents the production of small numbers of offspring that are carefully nurtured for a particular environment.

All humans follow an extreme K-strategy. They have few young, who take years to mature and require a great deal of care. They have large brains and complex societies based on cooperation. However, human races are not identical. The chart on page 3 shows that Asians consistently show more K behavior than whites, who in turn show more than blacks. There is virtually no departure from this pattern.

Maturation and Reproduction

In almost every respect, racial differences in the physiology of reproduction show an r-K pattern that runs from blacks to whites to Asians. Fraternal twinning, for example, which happens when a mother releases more than one egg during ovulation, is clearly an r-strategy of producing more and smaller young, who are more likely to be miscarried, be born underweight, die in infancy, and receive less parental care.

Fraternal twinning is twice as common among blacks as among whites, and twice as common among whites as among Asians. Triplets are ten times more common among whites than among Asians and 17 times more common among Africans than among whites. In some African populations, multiple births account for 60 out of every 1000. In Japan, where twins are very rare, they are viewed suspiciously as the products of a “litter,” more akin to dogs than to humans.

Offspring of the different races gestate and mature according to different r-K strategies. Blacks are born earlier and smaller than whites, but are stronger and better coordinated. They can sit up and roll over sooner than whites, who can do so sooner than Asians. On average, blacks walk at age 11 months, whites at 12 months, and Asians at 13 months.

Although it is a specialized measure of development, permanent tooth eruption occurs sooner in Africans than in Europeans, and later in Asians. Among primates in general, there is near-perfect correlation between lateness of permanent tooth eruption and such things as length of life, brain size, years to maturity, and complexity of social organization.

Blacks reach sexual maturity sooner than whites, who reach it sooner than Asians. By age twelve, 19 percent of American black girls have fully developed breasts and pubic hair whereas only five percent of white girls do. Blacks, on average, have an earlier first menstruation than whites, and Asians menstruate later than whites. In the United States, the average white woman is two full years older than the average black woman when she first has sexual intercourse, and Asians start having intercourse even later than whites.

Professor Rushton has bravely taken on the delicate subject of genital size, which has received reluctant but official attention because of AIDS. International organizations that try to provide condoms to people all over the world have discovered that one size does not fit all. Blacks have larger penises than whites, who have larger penises than Asians. The length of the vagina also differs proportionately in each race. Black men produce more sperm than do whites, and Asian men produce the least.

In the United States, black married couples report the greatest frequency of sexual intercourse, and Asian married couples report the lowest frequency. AIDS, like other sexually transmitted disease, is most common among blacks, rarest among Asians.

In Africa, compared to Europe or Asia, it is common to have sexual relations with many partners and to expend less effort on child-rearing. Older brothers and sisters often look after smaller children. There are also huge racial and regional differences in the number of offspring produced. In the United States, the average woman produces 14 children, grand children and great-grand children; in Africa the figure is 258. This prodigious African reproductive effort takes place over a shorter life-span. Blacks do not live as long as whites who, in turn, do not live as long as Asians.

Here, clearly, are patterns of maturational and reproductive behavior that show a consistent r-K pattern. Quick maturity, early reproduction, numerous offspring, and shorter lives put blacks closer to the oyster end of the scale than whites, who are closer to it than Asians.

Differences in sexual activity, life-span, and number of children are usually attributed to “culture” or “environment,” but there is every reason to believe that they are at least partly genetic, just as size of sex organs or age of sexual maturity are almost entirely genetic. Life-span, for example, is clearly hereditary in part. The age at which an adopted child will die is more easily predicted from the life-spans of the biological parents than from those of the adoptive parents. Likewise, identical twins die, on average, only 37 months apart whereas fraternal twins die 78 months apart.

What about the other components of the human K-strategy, such as altruism, law-abidingness, and the other characteristics that make up distinctly human social organizations? To what extent are what we think of as personality — and the cultural institutions that reflect a population’s group personality — the products of heredity, and thus properly included in an analysis of r-K strategy? Prof. Rushton has exhaustively surveyed recent studies of heredity, which suggest a powerful genetic influence on virtually all aspects of human behavior.

— r

Egg Production

K —

500
million
a year

8,000
a year

200
a year

12
a year

2
a year

1
every
five
years

Race and r-K Variables

Variable

Asians

Whites

Blacks

Brain Size

Large

Intermediate

Small

IQ

105

100

85

Decision Times

Fast

Intermediate

Slow

Cultural Achievements

High

High

Low

Gestation Times

?

Intermediate

Short

Development

Late

Intermediate

Early

Age of first intercourse

Late

Intermediate

Early

Life Span

Long

Intermediate

Short

Twinning per 100,000

4

8

16

Hormone Levels

Low

Intermediate

High

Genitalia

Small

Intermediate

Large

Intercourse Frequency

Low

Intermediate

High

AIDS/Syphilis

Low

Intermediate

High

Aggressiveness

Low

Intermediate

High

Cautiousness

High

Intermediate

Low

Dominance

Low

Intermediate

High

Self-Concept

Low

Intermediate

High

Marital Stability

High

Intermediate

Low

Criminality

Low

Intermediate

High

Administrative Ability

High

High

Low

Genes vs. Environment

Some of the most startling and convincing data on the relative influences of genes vs. environment come from studies of identical twins who were separated at birth and reared apart. Identical twins come from a single egg that splits in two; the twins are genetically identical. Fraternal twins are produced by a double ovulation and are no more genetically alike than ordinary siblings. (Unlike fraternal twinning rates, there are no racial differences in the frequencies of identical twinning.)

Such things as Head Start or special education appear to have little lasting effect on IQ differences either between individuals or races.

The crucial finding is that identical twins reared apart are more like each other in virtually every way than are fraternal twins who were reared in the same household. From these similarities it is possible to estimate how much of the variation in personality traits is caused by genes and how much by environment.

The chart at the bottom of this page shows twin-study estimates of the genetic contribution to various attitudes. These estimates almost certainly undervalue heritability because the method used to calculate it assumes that all aspects of environment are arbitrary. In fact, to a very large degree, people influence their own environments according to traits that are at least partly genetic. Thus, even within the same family, an aggressive child elicits different responses from parents and playmates — and thus has a different environment — from a child who is placid and cooperative. Once they are independent of their parents, young people follow their genetic propensities even more freely by choosing entirely different environments.

The methodology of heritability estimates ignores this. Thus, much of the influence on personality traits that is due to “environment” undoubtedly reflects personal surroundings that differ primarily because people shape their surroundings to match their genetic predilections.

Intelligence, which is one of the most important, stable and most frequently measured traits, is also one of the most heritable. Variations in intelligence within a population appear to be 60 to 80 percent governed by heredity.

It is important to note that heritability estimates are for variations in IQ, not total IQ. Thus, for two brothers with IQs of 100 and 120, a genetic component of 60 percent (and an environmental component of 40 percent) does not imply that 40 IQ points of the 100-IQ brother’s intelligence are theoretically attributable to environment. It means only that 40 percent of the 20-point difference between the brothers — 8 IQ points — is theoretically governed by non-genetic factors.

Furthermore, no one is really sure how environment influences the remaining 40 to 20 percent that is presumably non-genetic. Non-genetic factors may well be grossly biological events like malnutrition, childhood diseases, and mishaps in the womb, rather than the household or educational differences that most people think of as environment. Such things as Head Start or special education appear to have very little lasting effect on IQ differences either between individuals or races.

For the different racial groups, Prof. Rushton has aggregated the results of a great many IQ studies to arrive at the following averages:

Although Asians have a higher general intelligence than whites, the difference is mainly in visuo-spatial performance rather than verbal ability. This makes Asians good engineers and mathematicians, but they do not have a pronounced advantage in careers like law or language teaching. Not surprisingly, a 1980s survey of professions in the United States found that Chinese-Americans were over-represented in the sciences at a rate six times their proportion in the population. However, there were only one fourth as many Chinese-American lawyers as their numbers would suggest. Blacks were minimally represented in both fields.

Although it is common to criticize IQ tests precisely because they give disparate results by race, there are other, more obviously biological indicators of intelligence that cannot be accused of “cultural bias.” One that Prof. Rushton himself has studied in depth is brain size.

Larger heads (containing larger brains) are positively correlated with intelligence. This is true within families, with the sibling with the largest head likely to be the most intelligent. It is also true within races, with large-brained blacks or Asians likely to be more intelligent than their small-brained co-racialists.

As groups, whites and Asians have larger brains than blacks. At age seven, for example, black children are 16 percentile points taller than white children, but their head perimeter is eight percentile points smaller. Asians are likely to have larger brains than whites, though some indications of larger size appear only after correcting upward for the fact that Asians are smaller than whites. A small person with the same sized brain as a big person can be thought of as having a “larger” brain, because smaller bodies require less brain to maintain basal functions.

Whites probably have about 100 million fewer cerebral neurons, on average, than Asians and blacks have about 480 million fewer than whites. The black/Asian difference is especially significant because of differences in body size. Blacks with small brains in large bodies are at a serious intellectual disadvantage compared to Asians because a larger proportion of their already-smaller brains is probably occupied with basal functions and not available for conscious thought.

Yet another directly physiological assessment of intelligence is the type of reaction-time test pioneered by Prof. Arthur Jensen of Berkeley. These tests require people to make simple choices when a light goes on. Intelligence is correlated with both speed and consistency of reaction time, and Asians perform better than whites, who perform better than blacks.

Prof. Rushton cites several additional reasons to suspect that racial differences in intelligence are due to genetics rather than environment. One is something called regression towards the mean. Individuals who are at extreme points in a normal distribution of any trait are likely to have children not so extreme as themselves. Very tall people, for example, are likely to have taller-than-average children, but their children’s heights tend towards the average for the population. With respect to IQ, studies have repeatedly shown that black Americans regress towards a mean of 85 while whites regress towards a mean of 100.

Inbreeding depression scores are another persuasive indicator that racial differences are genetic. Children that result from unions of very close relatives often have unusually low scores on certain kinds of intelligence tests, indicating that the abilities measured by those tests are highly susceptible to genetic influence. As it happens, these measures of intelligence are the very ones that show the greatest black-white differences, which suggests that the intelligence gap is also genetic.

Other Personality Differences

High intelligence is not the only hallmark of K-strategy. Professor Rushton explains that the races with more K traits have more complex and cooperative social organizations, are more restrained and law abiding, and show more altruism. In terms of r-K strategy, altruism and social cooperation permit individuals to rear their young under more dependable and peaceful circumstances — which is a precondition for groups that have staked their survival on producing small numbers of large-brained but slow-maturing offspring.

For traits like altruism and aggression to be properly included in an r-K pattern, they must be shown to be, like intelligence, at least partly controlled by heredity and to differ from race to race. Research suggests that these traits are greatly influenced by heredity, and that they appear early in life. In one study, children who were rated as “aggressive” by their peers at age eight were rated the same way by a different set of peers 10 years later. By the time they were 19 years old, those in the “aggressive” group were three times more likely to have a police record than those who were not considered “aggressive.”

Identical twins are about twice as much alike in terms of altruism and aggression as fraternal twins. Studies in both Europe and Japan have confirmed that when a twin has been convicted of a crime, an identical co-twin is two to three times more likely also to have been convicted than is a fraternal co-twin.

Shyness and sociability also appear very early in children and endure through adulthood. Studies of identical twins reared apart have shown astonishing similarities not only in personality, but in careers, frequencies of marriage, style of dress, and individual mannerisms [please see AR cover story of August, 1993, for a broader discussion of twin studies].

Research also shows that predictions about criminal behavior in adopted children can be made more accurately from the behavior of biological parents rather than adoptive parents. Some time between the ages of 21 and 30, the adult personality is “set like plaster,” and environment seems to have little effect on it.

Prof. Rushton points out that most people marry and make friends with people who are genetically like themselves. They seek others who not only look but think like they do. Durability of marriage has been shown to be linked to genetic similarity of the partners — in intelligence, appearance, and in other personality traits that are to some extent under genetic control.

It is therefore not surprising that biological siblings have more similar friends than do adopted siblings. Likewise, young criminals — who appear to have a genetic propensity for crime — commonly make friends with other young people with the same propensity.

This clearly demonstrated human preference for associating with others who are similar has important implications for race relations. Even very young children are conscious of race and show racial preferences. Prof. Rushton writes that ethnocentrism and “racism” are probably natural mechanisms built into the human genotype.

Expressions of altruism also have important implications for race relations. In virtually all species, the closer two individuals are, genetically, the more likely they are to help each other. This makes evolutionary sense if genes are thought of as the basic units of evolution. Genes for altruism are likely to leave more copies of themselves in future generations if they produce a trait that causes individuals to help their close kin survive.

Ants and bees are especially altruistic — frequently dying in great numbers to protect the colony — because they have an unusual reproductive pattern that causes workers to share 75 percent of their genes. Squirrels and monkeys can detect genetic distance between themselves and others, and are more cooperative towards close relatives.

Male Rhesus monkeys are promiscuous and cannot be sure that the child of a mate is their own. However, they have some unknown way of recognizing their offspring, and are kinder to them than they are to unrelated youngsters. (Actual kinship has been confirmed through blood tests.)

Belding’s ground squirrels mate with multiple partners, and females have litters that contain both sisters and half sisters. Despite the fact that they share the same womb and the same nest, full sisters fight less often and help each other more often than half sisters.

Among humans, preschool children are 40 times more likely to be assaulted by a step parent — that is to say, a genetic stranger — than by a biological parent. In promiscuous societies in which fathers are not sure which children are their own, they put more effort into caring for their sisters’ children than for those of their wives. A sister’s child is always close kin, whereas a promiscuous wife’s child may not be kin at all.

Experiments in altruism confirm the obvious: People are more willing to help people like themselves. Similar appearance is a good indicator of genetic similarity, and Prof. Rushton observes that racial solidarity can be viewed as a kind of extended nepotism. He also argues that it is often fruitless to look for sociological or economic reasons for the racial conflicts found all around the world. Genetic similarity and the desire to preserve a common set of genes are more likely explanations.

Racial Differences

The races differ consistently in the personality traits that can be classified according to r-K theory, just as they do in intelligence. Asians are more restrained, cooperative, and less aggressive than whites; whites are more restrained and less aggressive than blacks. These rankings are the same, whether subjects are assessed by personality tests or by their peers. From an early age, blacks are more impulsive and dominant than whites, and males boast and swagger more. Asians are least dominant and impulsive.

Differences in crime rates by race are too well established to bear repeating [please see AR cover story of June, 1994]. These differences are consistent across multi- and mono-racial societies. Nevertheless, stiff resistance to genetic explanations leads to environmental theories that are unintentionally funny. As Prof. Rushton notes, earlier in this century, all forms of deviance were so low in American Chinatowns — despite their poverty — that the ghetto was thought to protect people from crime. For blacks, isolation is routinely said to cause crime.

Although trendy talk of “self-esteem” suggests otherwise, blacks have higher opinions of themselves than whites, who have higher opinions of themselves than Asians. Asians are the most introverted and anxious; blacks are the least. Suicide figures reflect this: Whites kill themselves twice as frequently as blacks, and Asians kill themselves more often than whites. Self-consciousness and introspection seem to rise along with K characteristics.

Rates of mental instability show the opposite trend. Two hundred and forty out of every 100,000 blacks are in mental institutions whereas only 162 of every 100,000 whites are. Nor is this a function of poverty or wealth; blacks suffer from mental disorders, drug addiction, and alcoholism at higher rates than whites in all social classes. Asians, despite their introversion and anxiety, have the fewest mental problems.

Differences Within Races

Prof. Rushton points out that r-K theory can account for differences between individuals of the same race. That is to say, people of the same race tend to vary according to the same pattern that distinguishes the races. In both Europe and Africa, the following traits tend to go together: large families, short life-span, criminality, high levels of sexuality, loose family ties, frequency of twinning.

Mothers of fraternal twins are more likely than other mothers to have had early first periods, larger families, lower birth-weight children (even when they are singletons), more infant mortality, to have been promiscuous, and to have shorter lives. Prof. Rushton has found that in all societies, fraternal twins are more likely to be born into the lower than the upper classes.

A Swedish study determined that girls who have early first periods are more likely to cheat, be truant, and try marijuana than girls who have late first periods. In the United States, early maturation is correlated with promiscuity, illegitimate births, leaving school, crime, and other social problems. Early sexual maturity seems to be heritable, with daughters resembling their mothers.

If altruism is an important K trait, crime would be an extreme r trait. Across broad populations, crime is associated with behavior that almost perfectly describes how blacks differ from whites and whites differ from Asians: large families, illegitimacy, low intelligence, early sexual maturity, promiscuity, weak family ties, little investment in children, and a short life.

Prof. Rushton suggests that the entire complex of r-K trait differences is therefore largely under genetic control, and that it characterizes different social classes just as it does races. There is little question that the most physiological r-K traits are heavily influenced by heredity. Prof. Rushton makes the additional point that physiology is closely correlated with many other forms of behavior previously thought to be independent of heredity but now found to be greatly influenced by it. The result is a strong case for believing that the patterns of behavior that distinguish races as well as individuals are largely inherent, reflect a consistent r-K pattern, and are impervious to social “programs.”

r-selected?

Prof. Rushton takes the argument one provocative step further. In the current era of social mobility, in which most hereditary social privileges have disappeared, people succeed or fail in life very much according to their native abilities. The children of the rich are usually smart and talented because they inherit the qualities that made their parents rich.

However, as Prof. Rushton points out, a child’s IQ is a better predictor of his adult social status than is the social status of his parents. And, when the unintelligent children of the rich start descending the social scale, they take on the habits and values of their new class rather than keep the ones of the class into which they were born. Even the most K-oriented parents can have an r child, whose life increasingly reflects his genetic inclinations.

Prof. Rushton’s findings are a serious blow to contemporary egalitarian dogma. Unfortunately, the usual reaction to his work is simply to make wild accusations about his motives. In an article called “Professors of Hate,” the October 20th issue of Rolling Stone claims to have unmasked him as a vicious racist.

Of course, it is the haters of science and free inquiry who build societies that cannot but degenerate as ours has. Anyone who wants to understand the world as it, and to base policy on facts rather than on fantasies, cannot ignore this very important book.

Hot and Cold

Why did the different races develop different r-K strategies? Prof. Rushton’s view is similar to that of Richard Lynn of the University of Coleraine in Northern Ireland, who has written extensively on race. He suggests that racial differences were caused by evolution in different climates.

Although there is disagreement about when different races appeared, Prof. Rushton inclines towards the “single-origin” theory, according to which all humans evolved from relatively recent African ancestors. Homo sapiens probably diverged from the ancestral homo line about 200,000 years ago. DNA analysis shows that human genes closest to those of the apes are found in Africans, which suggests an African origin. Similar analysis suggests that the earliest humans were probably much like Central African pygmies or Kalahari bushmen.

The African/non-African split probably took place about 110,000 years ago, as early man migrated out of Africa, and the white/Asian split occurred perhaps 41,000 years ago. The newly-appeared races continued their development in northern environments that were much harsher than that of Africa and that exerted great evolutionary pressure. In cold climates, people must make clothes, build fires, store food for the winter, and build shelters.

Hunting is much more important in the north because cold-climate fruits and nuts are highly seasonal. Hunting is also more difficult, because there is less cover for hunters. Even today, hunter-gatherer societies use more different and more sophisticated tools the further north they are found. Big-game hunting also requires that groups of men work together and that they devise a system for sharing the meat. This requires much more cooperation than fruit gathering by individuals, which, in the tropics, can be done year-round.

Prof. Rushton concludes that Asians developed particularly high intelligence and especially good visuo-spatial abilities because the Northern Siberian environment in which they lived and hunted was especially harsh. Amerindians, who crossed the Bering Strait, are related to Asians, but after they entered the Americas they moved steadily southward and were not subject to the rigors that sharpened the Asian mind. Also, they found large mammals that had never been hunted before and could be easily killed. They probably exterminated the giant sloths and mammoths that once inhabited the Americas.

If climate and latitude are crucial for evolution, Eskimos should be the most advanced people on earth. Prof. Rushton explains that humans did not start living in the Arctic until relatively recently, so the harsh climate has not yet selected Eskimos as keenly for intelligence and cooperation as it has Asians and Europeans.

O Tempora, O Mores!

Breakthrough on Race?

Practically every literate American has by now read about the new book by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein called The Bell Curve, and has learned that it says something AR has been saying for years: The races do not have the same average intelligence. That a book taking this position should receive blanket news coverage is astonishing good news. Not surprisingly, much of the press reaction has been pure hysteria, and it is a sad commentary on our times that perhaps the only person to express disagreement in a civilized, respectful tone was the black economist, Thomas Sowell.

Nevertheless, the rules of dialogue in America may finally have changed. It may soon be possible for someone to stand up at a PTA meeting in Topeka, Kansas and say, “No, there is nothing ‘racist’ about the fact that there are no blacks in the gifted children’s program; there just aren’t very many blacks with IQs over 135.” It may even become possible to say, “No, I don’t want blacks moving into the neighborhood because they are not like us.”

The Bell Curve, which we plan to review in a future issue, is by all accounts a thorough and cautious analysis of the literature on heredity and intelligence. It does not appear to be an intellectual break-through like Race, Evolution, and Behavior, but by injecting questions of race and intelligence into the mainstream, it has done the country an enormous service.

Unfortunately, the United States is probably capable of weathering a 90-day lather over The Bell Curve that only leaves the country exactly as it was before. Well, not quite as it was. The tumult over this book cannot help but legitimize what millions of Americans already think privately. If the country continues to ignore facts about race, this book will only fuel a growing fury against the liberal American nanny-state. Whites are slowly regaining a sense of their legitimate interests, with Californian voters showing encouraging spunk in the face of orthodox lunacy ...

Elections, 1994

By the time this issue of AR is printed, mid-term elections will be over. There has been much huffing and puffing about whether the Republicans might win a majority in at least one chamber in Congress — as if this would make much difference to the future of the country.

Considerably more significant and interesting will have been the voter initiative, Proposition 187, in California. If passed, it would deny welfare, public education, subsidized housing, and all but emergency medical service to illegal aliens in the state. It would also require teachers and welfare workers to report illegals to the authorities.

Only in a country that has lost its bearings would there be a need for citizens to organize a movement against handouts for illegals. Any properly-run country would deport them long before they managed to go on welfare. Politicians, paralyzed at the thought of being called “racists,” have supported a system that only encourages the dispossession of native-born Americans.

Hispanics account for the largest number of illegals in California, and they have demonstrated threateningly against the measure. On October 28th, the California National Guard was put on alert in case the proposition carried and Hispanics went on the rampage. The message to Californians is clear: Give us money or we may destroy your cities.

At one anti-proposition rally in Los Angeles that reportedly attracted 70,000 people, demonstrators disregarded the advice of their white advisors and waved hundreds of Mexican flags. Only people not blinded by “sensitivity” could fail to be outraged by this. Mexicans make no secret that they want to keep pouring into California — and perhaps the rest of the country — until it is completely theirs.

There have been a number of demonstrations against the measure in Mexico itself, with “anti-racism” rallies in front of the American embassy. Mexico, of course, keeps a special armed forces unit on its southern border to boot out illegal immigrants from Guatemala and Belize. The Mexican government has given money to support the advertising campaign against Proposition 187.

The measure, also called the Save Our State initiative, was put on the ballot by ordinary citizens who had finally had enough of official capitulation to liberal-alien-non-white demands. It is only through similar efforts by determined, public-spirited whites that dispossession can be ended.

Fair Housing?

In Chicago, a white couple has been ordered by a federal judge to sell their home of 20 years and clear out within 120 days. Their neighbors, a black Puerto-Rican man and his Puerto-Rican wife, charged them with racial harassment and sought damages of $10 million. The whites, a Mr. and Mrs. Kraft and their grown children, were accused of vandalizing the neighbors’ house and of taunting them. The Krafts deny doing anything.

Ultimately, the Krafts had no choice. The Puerto Ricans were represented for free by a big Chicago law firm, Altheimer & Gray, and the Krafts would have gone bankrupt simply defending themselves. A lawyer for the Krafts described the situation as nothing more than a dispute between neighbors who happened to be of different races. [AP, Racist family ordered to move, Detroit News, Nov. 3, 1994, p. 1. Matt O’Connor, Seed of bigotry costs neighbor, Chi Trib, Nov. 6, 1994, p. 1 (Chicagoland section).]

America, America

A black commissioner of Fulton County, Georgia, named Gordon Joyner has accused the chairman of the commission of racism. It appears that Mitch Skandalakis called someone a “buffoon.” It’s “close to calling him a baboon,” says Mr. Joyner. [Dick Williams, Racism rears its head again in DeKalb, no paper name or date.]

Meanwhile, in Chicago, a 29-year-old black man has been convicted of stabbing his neighbor after the two got into an argument over which knew more black history. [Least Justifiable, Salt Lake Tribune, 10/16/94.]

In Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina is in a stew after it elected its sixth black homecoming queen in a row. Only 1,800 of the 22,800 students are black, but they all vote for the black candidate, while whites split their votes among as many as 12 white candidates. [Peter Applebome, Class Notes, NYT, 10/19/94, p. B11.]

The Massachusetts Division of Medical Assistance has revealed that in 1993, it spent $50,000 on fertility drugs for 260 people, 80 of whom were on welfare. Two of the welfare recipients already had eight children each.

Jose Martinez, an illegal alien, has confessed to starting a California fire that destroyed 365 homes and businesses, and caused $528 million in damage. Mr. Martinez says that last October, he started what became known as the Laguna fire in order to summon Gotam, the chief of a thousand demons. [Transient says he set California blaze, Miami Herald, 10/1/94.]

The U.S. Department of Education is cracking down on Georgia school districts for “racially biased tracking.” The state’s black students are two to three times more likely than whites to be “intellectually disabled,” and only one sixth as likely to be “gifted.” The department’s Office of Civil Rights is forcing five school districts to correct such discrepancies. [Betsy White, 5 school districts found to be biased, Atl. Journal/Const., Aug. 7, 1994.]

Devil’s Night is Back

In Detroit, the night before Halloween is called Devil’s Night, and with good reason. For eleven years, young blacks have turned it into an arson free-for-all, setting so many fires that reporters from all over the world used to come watch Detroiters try to burn down their own city.

However, during the last three years of Mayor Coleman Young’s administration, the city managed to control the problem. A volunteer army of 30,000 to 40,000 people patrolled the streets, and fire trucks from all over the region were stationed in advance in the most crime-prone parts of town.

The new mayor, Dennis Archer, let down his guard. He started talking about Halloween Eve rather than Devil’s Night, in the hope that the problem had gone away. The city signed up only 8,000 volunteers, and fire trucks waited at fire houses until they were called. More than 100 buildings were put to the torch, in the fourth-worst Devil’s Night on record. [Up in Smoke, Detroit News, Nov. 1, 1994. Nancy Costello, Most Fires Since ‘86, Archer Laments, Detroit Free Press, Nov. 2, 1994, p. 1B.]

This is an Order

Prince George’s County, Maryland, borders on Washington, DC, and its population is changing from white to black. Recently, parents of elementary school children received a list of “Priority Goals for Prince George’s Co. School System,” which included the following: “The achievement and participation of black male students will equal exceed [sic] that of all other students.” [P.G. County’s peculiar guidelines, etc., Wash Times, 10/8/94, p. D2.]

Missy McLauchlin, R.I.P.

Late in 1992, a group of South Carolina blacks made a New Year’s resolution to rape and kill a white woman, in return for “400 years of oppression.” On Dec. 30th of that year, they gang-raped 25-year-old Missy McLauchlin of Charleston, tortured her for hours, then shot her five times in the head and dumped her on a highway. She lived for several hours.

In October of this year, the man who probably pulled the trigger was finally caught. Joseph Gardner was arrested on an anonymous tip in Philadelphia. Six other blacks, including two women accomplices, have already been convicted in the case, [Bobbie Young, McLauchlin murder suspect captured on FBI tip, Post and Courier (Charleston), 10/20/94, p. 1.] which was almost entirely ignored by the national media.

Poor Rwanda

As if the slaughter of half a million citizens were not trouble enough, Rwanda has had to put out an all-points bulletin for its foreign minister, who has disappeared in New York with a suitcase full of money. In October, Jean-Marie Ndagijimana was dispatched to New York with about $200,000 in cash for the country’s strapped UN mission. Despite a plea from the mission staff that he find cheaper rooms, he stayed at the New York Hilton. After delaying the transfer of funds, his excellency checked out of the hotel — with the money — and disappeared. Mr. Ndagijimana is a Hutu, and was appointed foreign minister as a gesture of reconciliation by the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front. [Julia Preston, Rwandan Envoy Missing with suitcase of cash, Wash Post, 10/19/94, p. A37.]

America on Trial

The World Council of Churches is collecting evidence that the United States is guilty of human rights violations because it practices racism. A team from the council is touring eight American cities, in order to interview non-whites. The council will turn over the completed investigation to the United Nations, which it hopes will conduct a full-blown human rights investigation. [Dan Wetzel, Rights probe is focusing on racism, Chi Tribune, 10/14/94, p. 10 Sec. 2.]

Poor Billy Graham

Evangelist Billy Graham has been planning a crusade in Atlanta, but is getting very little help from blacks. The director of the crusade says he has found that black preachers “are much more concerned with civil rights.”

Nothing seems to change. In 1973, when Rev. Graham had his last Atlanta crusade, preacher and civil rights activist Ralph Abernathy complained that the event was “too white oriented.” Nothing daunted, Rev. Graham plans to make race relations the main theme of the crusade. He calls for total integration “in our homes, in our worship services, even in our marriages.” [Gayle White, A commitment to racial unity, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 10/25/94, p. 1, Local News.]

Candor in High Places

In October, Senator Conrad Burns of Montana was back in his state from Washington when a rancher asked him, “Conrad, how can you live back there [in Washington] with all those niggers?”

“It’s a hell of a challenge,” replied Sen. Burns.

The senator has been forced into an apology, but appears not to have been as craven as he could have been. “It’s always a challenge when you bring different cultures and beliefs together,” he said. “We can make this work in America.”

Rosalinda Ortiz is a junior police officer in New York City. She was recently discovered to be receiving fraudulent welfare payments in addition to her $27,000-a-year salary. It also appears that in 1992, she forged a check. Her boyfriend, the father of her two children, is in a Maryland jail for armed robbery. [Student cop on dole-fraud rap, NY Post, 10/12/94.]

Gratitude

Miriam Waltzer, a white candidate for the Louisiana state Supreme Court has dropped out of a runoff election against a black candidate. She probably would have won, but the district had been deliberately created to give blacks a majority. Many blacks were furious at the prospect of a white victory, and Mrs. Waltzer concluded that a victory might “permanently scar this city.” Mrs. Waltzer is said to have a long record of civil rights work. [White judge quits race to ensure seat for black, Miami Herald, 10/9/94.]

Only a White Could Do It

Noel Ignatiev is the editor of Race Traitor magazine, which advocates the abolition of the white race. Since whiteness is nothing more than an evil state of mind, he does not think extermination is necessary; just race treason. Here are some of his remarks from an interview published in the November/December issue of Utne Reader:

“For the white race to be effective, it must be unanimous, or nearly so. The reason is that if the cops and the courts and so forth couldn’t be sure that every person who looked white was loyal to the system, then what would be the point of extending race privileges to whites? And if they stopped extending race privileges, what would happen to the white race? Our strategy seeks to bring together a determined minority, willing to defy white rules so flagrantly they make it impossible to pretend that all those who look white are loyal to the system of racial oppression.”

“One of the effects of white supremacy is that it represses the cultures of Afro-Americans and other peoples of color. If that repression were removed, who knows how they could flourish? Moreover, American culture is ... uncontestably mulatto. Without race prejudice, Americans might discover that culturally they are all Afro-American, as well as Native American, and so forth.”

“While not all forms of injustice can be collapsed into whiteness, undermining white race solidarity opens the door to fundamental social change in other areas.” [Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity, (interview with Noel Ignatiev, Utne Reader, Nov./Dec., 1994, pp. 82ff.]

Life Under Black Rule

In the face of government threats, one of the oldest white families in Zimbabwe (former Rhodesia) has canceled a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the arrival of its forbears into the African interior. The Rosenfels, a German family that has spent four generations in Africa, planned to celebrate their centenary with a two-day trek in a pair of lovingly restored ox-drawn wagons. They had trained two spans of oxen, and were to drive through the Mangwe Pass just as their ancestors had done.

Zimbabwean Vice President Joshua Nkomo heard of the plan and said that the Rosenfels were “undesirable elements,” who should “leave the country now before it is too late.” One ruling party official called the celebration “a declaration of war against the peace-loving people of Zimbabwe.”

The Rosenfels have already had some of their land confiscated by the government. They canceled the trek out of fear that their remaining property would be seized. [Jan Raath, Officials Declare prominent white family is ‘undesirable,’ Wash Times, 8/18/94.]

Ethnic Friction in Atlanta

Auburn Avenue is the heart of Atlanta’s black district. Under segregation, it was bustling and prosperous. Martin Luther King, Jr. grew up there in a well-appointed home. Auburn Ave. is now a slum.

Since the 1970s, Ethiopians and Eritreans have been moving to Atlanta, and many now live on Auburn Ave. Surprisingly, many had heard of the street before they came to America, and are astonished to find that it is now a wreck. Though they do not let reporters use their names, they do not hesitate to blame American blacks for the squalor. “You won’t find an Ethiopian or an Eritrean without a job,” says one. [John Blake, Out of Africa, onto Auburn, Atlanta Constitution, no date.]

Twelve Good Men and True

Ever since the Los Angeles police officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted in a state trial by a mostly-white jury, jurisdictions all over the country have been trying to think of ways to get more non-white jurors. In most states, jurors are selected from lists of voters and from registered drivers. They tend to be disproportionately white, so New York has become the first state to pass a law calling jurors from welfare and unemployment lists.

Governor Mario Cuomo vetoed an early version of the law for fear it would violate the privacy of people getting handouts (are they really embarrassed about it?), but the new law will keep their secrets safe. Colleen McMahon, chairman of the New York State Jury Project, says that the new selection method “sends a strong signal to minorities that they are part of the jury system and tries to dispel the belief that these groups are being excluded form the jury process.” [Frances McMorris, New York State to call neediest for jury duty, WSJ, 10/13/94.] The average welfare recipient has an IQ of 85.

White Men Get Top Scores

White men do better than any other group on the science portion of the National Board of Medical Examiners test that all doctors must pass in order to practice medicine. Pass rates for men in 1988 were as follows: White — 89.9 percent, Asian — 86.6 percent, Hispanic — 71.6 percent, black — 53.9 percent. For women the rates were: White — 84.1, Asian — 78.9, Hispanic — 55.8, black — 44. The test also has a clinical section, in which there is a steep racial gradient, but men and women do equally well.

This test is taken after medical school. The very low pass rate for black women, for example, suggests that affirmative action is wasting places in medical schools on people who cannot do the work.

Sir — I find it passing strange that Robert Pool (according to the review of Eve’s Rib: The Biological Roots of Sex Differences in the November issue of AR), seems to be at great pains to temper his findings of innate differences between the sexes with all manner of caveats and disclaimers, but reports as fact the highly controversial notion that hormones appear to cause homosexuality.

The proposition that their condition is inborn and immutable rather than acquired is the bottom-line basis of incessant demands by gay activists that homosexuals be declared a protected class under the law, like blacks and women.

If Mr. Pool offers any objective basis for his assertion — or even if he doesn’t — his book will surely be used by groups such as “Act Up” and “Queer Nation” as another round of ammunition in their battle against straight society.

O.M. Ostlund, Jr., State College, Penn.

Sir — I am even more impressed with AR than usual to see that Thomas Jackson had the guts to give Richard McCulloch’s The Racial Compact a favorable review in the October issue. I have been a McCulloch fan for years, as he is the only theorist I know who dares risk criticism from both “racists” and “anti-racists.”

To my knowledge, he has never expressed the slightest dislike for the other people who crowd the planet. His only concern is in preserving his own minority people and in encouraging other groups to do the same. He has opened the door to a racialism that is based simply on the recognition that the races are happiest when left to themselves, whereas they come to resent each other when forced to live together.

I, myself have always loved African art and black music. Nevertheless, I fully agree with Mr. McCulloch that diversity is best served by separation. I am grateful to him for articulating what I suspect many well-meaning people have been trying to muster the courage to say. On the other hand, I wonder if it is possible for the message of “moral racism” to be spread without being deliberately distorted.

Paul Neff, Cambridge, Mass.

Sir — I have regretfully concluded that your November cover story is probably correct: blacks vote for Marion Barry as mayor of Washington, DC because that is the sort of man they actually want running their city. Sometimes blacks manage to disappoint even AR readers.

Your readers might be interested, though, in one of the Barry campaign’s little techniques. Unlike most Jurisdiction, the District of Columbia permits ex-felons to vote in elections at all levels. (Thirty-five states permit ex-cons to vole in local elections, but DC: is unique in permitting them to vote in Presidential races.)

An organization called the Coalition of Ex-offenders — many of whom know Mr. Barry personally from the dark days of Youth Pride Inc. that your article described — has been getting out the ex-con vote. As many as 75 of these people have been tramping down alleys, looking for bums, derelicts, and other ex-cons, to register them as voters. Once the coalition had found these people, they told the transportation division of the Barry campaign where they were.

On primary day — and I’m sure this will be repeated on election day — a fleet of 50 vans and 200 taxis collected the inmates from methadone clinics and half-way houses, along with loads of street-sleepers, and took them to polling stations.

This may not be everyone’s idea of democracy in action, but who says blacks can’t organize things? When was the last time white people ever did anything quite so resourceful to further their own interests?

Calvin Streeter, Bethesda, Md.

Sir — One of your November “O Tempora” items mentions the president of Moorhouse College’s $400,000 salary, and Nelson Mandela’s decision to pay himself twice the salary F.W. de Klerk got for being President of South Africa. This reminds me of a thought I have long had about blacks. Much as they complain about the slightest hint of mistreatment from us, once they have power they seem only to abuse their own people. Look at the way African leaders run their countries, or the black-run uplift organizations that steal and waste money that is supposed to be used to help other blacks.

I am beginning to think that blacks simply have a different conception of service or cooperation. For example, until I worked behind a counter with a group of blacks, I had always thought that black sales clerks were surly to whites because they didn’t like them. In fact, the blacks I worked with were surly to everyone. If anything, they were more polite to whites, because white customers were usually more polite to them.

There was nothing unusual about these black clerks, and they were not unfriendly to me. I think they simply operated at a lower level of concern for others. I am beginning to believe that this lower level is typical of blacks and is a distinguishing characteristic of black society.